Step 5: Conclusion

Step 6: To be continued

Months passed and I still look for a better LED. I decided to try a second version of this light bulb. This one will use an array of 9 x NS6W183T Nich...

Step 6: To be continued

Months passed and I still look for a better LED. I decided to try a second version of this light bulb. This one will use an array of 9 x NS6W183T Nichia LEDs. Rated at least 225 lumens each, I should have in excess of 2000 lumens of light. If 1000 lumens of those do reach my projection screen I will be happy, that’s the “eco mode” I was hoping for. The main issue with this attempt is that I have to keep the light source as small as possible while focusing it on that Fresnel lens inside the projector that’s 3x3 cm small. Oh, and the entire LED bulb has to fit a 5x5x9 cm space. Small space for serious power and an estimated 35 watts of dissipated heat. But I won’t give up. Look out for my next instructable on V2.0 once the 9 LEDs array is ready. Right now we’re about to have a baby so it’s standby for everything else. J

Thank you for reading this. Feel free to ask any questions, I’ll try to answer them.

Edit: our baby was born today! I'm the proud daddy of a very cute little boy!

You can now buy led projector bulbs from ebay. £36.49 + postage from here is the cheapest I found.http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/HD-LED-Projector-EXTRA-REPLACEMENT-SPARE-BULB-LAMP-/150591650632?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item230ff63b48

Copy and past that link and you can see for yourself.I was going to do the same thing, ie buy a used projector with no bulb and make my own, But I decided to buy one of the cheap Abis projectors off ebay. I was very supprised how good these cheap projectors are.But be very carefull. I purchased the Abis HDpro for £200 and it has two hdmi inputs, component, composite input, vga and tv tuner input. It handles 720p fine and 1080p with compression 4.3 to 16.9 aspec ratio in all formats. Some other makes don't have all these features. It saved me a lot of hassle trying to make one work the way you have.

But if you are trying leds I would look at the cheap led projector bulbs off ebay.Lamp Life: UP TO 50,000 hours Total Watts: 96watts (32 High powered LEDs fused onto a cell Plate) and upto 2,500 lumens.

Hi skaur, thanks for asking. My son proved to be a much bigger challenge. than we ever anticipated. That's because his medical condition requires almost daily kinetic therapy. So we're back and forth between home and hospital but other than that he's just fine. Hopefuuly he'll be soon in line with the other babies of his age.

As you can imagine v. 2.0 was put on hold and still is. The project is about 50% done but I have troubles focusing the light properly. I may switch to a car xenon bulb setup, it's cheaper and compatible with the shape of the reflector in the original bulb. See www.allinbox.fr for that. Cheers.

I don't know if this will work, but here is an HID headlight kit for about $34 US. You could mount the ballast outside and it says it's 3200 lumens. I have purchased other items from them and so far, decent quality. http://www.chinavasion.com/product_info.php/pName/drivers-edge-hid-xenon-headlamp-kit-h7/

The biggest problems with these HID Bulbs, especally the cheap ones is the arc that creates the light moves. Rather than a filiment an arc is making the light. the projector bulbs are made at the billionth of an ince to be sure the arc stays still. HID bulbs dont really matter if they flicker a little. but in the projector youd think it was lit with a candle. lol. It may be worth a try with the high quality ones but the cheap ones (like I have...) flicker a lot. if im point the headlight to a wall 10' away the light jumps up and down over a foot.

This would work butthe bulb is a little too long, no way of finding a proper reflector for it, light would get lost. But there are many that used this kind with good results. However, the lamp has a short life. And it's not LED-based :-)

Hey, I have read you project details and I like your persistance. I think you should look to the automotive industry for the new LED headlights. You should be able to come up with a bad to the bone light source. However, you may need an external 12VDC source with the appropriate amp rating to power this lamp. But it is already focused and super bright. Good luck. Jesse. Let me know palombo5050@yahoo.com. I am the type of person that would do the same thing you are doing. It is great to know there are others like me.

I am in the middle of a similar project and have completed lots of research.

The lamps used in these are usually a form of mercury halide, putting out 10-14 THOUSAND lumens. The number you are looking at (1000 in eco mode) is the final output from the projector after losses through the varying optics. If the origional bulb has a 7x loss, using a 2000lm source will result in about 280lm. At the moment I am waiting on a 50W 4000lm (only expecting 3000-3500lm) LED (6500k) from ebay, with colomating lens. i think this will help focus the light more and hopefully get me about 500lm on the screen This was £35 for the LED and the driver.

This should be enough for about 40" with reasonable brightness.

if you can afford it, try looking in to bigger LED's with better lumen outputs. You can get 100W 7000lm LED's, but i didnt have the money for one of them.

another option is to use a prism to combine the light from several LEDs to the projector. there are already some companys doing this with 4 lamps to give 10000lm outputs :)

The Toshiba projector original mercury halide lamp has 2000 lumens rating. That's a fact, written in its datasheet.

Now I wouldn't say I have 7x loss of light it's more like a half of the total output. So a 2000+ lumens array (294 lm x 9 = 2646 lumens if I'll take the matrix to its maximum rating) should yeld at least something close to 1000. Lacking any light measuring tools all my observations are based on eye. Do not judge by the photos, I overexposed a lot to get close to what's actually on the wall. All I'm saying in the end is that if I can get at least a double amount of light projected I'll be hapy, I can use my projector inside my small appartment.

Higher rating LEDs are unavailable here and would probably not fit inside the bulb bay considering the high heat emissions involved. Prisms are also not worth mentioning given the small space and the DIY character I intend to keep.

2000 Lumens rating is the final lumens at the screen. The bulbs in commercial projectors output ~10 000 + Lumen. You are going to want to put something like the Luminus SST-90 LED in there with sufficient cooling. You will need a proper power source even though running 1A to 3A looks decent. At 9A your going to need a decent sized heat sink.

Light not going straight will not make it through the LCD polarizers.

Unless you have a lens for each emitter to make the light go straight arrays will not work. Your looking for a 50mm+ aspheric lens.

Projectors are not very efficient with their light. Your looking at like 10-20% efficiency from light source total to on the screen.

i wonder if you could take a smaller fresnel lens directly in front of your LED array. That would focus the separate led's into a point, maybe acting like a single light source. Just a thought. it'd have to be a pretty specific lense...

Fresnel lens are hard to find. And I'll also loose some light in those. The problem is not focusing the light in one spot but filling the entire projector's concentrator lens with uniform light. A matte screen might be required as several light points might show "newton rings" on the projection screen. We'll see. Thanks you for your input.